China expects surging tourists for 'Golden Week'

A total of 480 million trips are expected to be made by travelers during the upcoming National Day holiday from Oct 1 to 7, up 13 percent year-on-year, and tourism income is expected to jump by 20 percent from a year ago to 27 million yuan ($4.39 million), the China Tourism Academy predicted on Monday.

Dai Bin, president of the academy, said that stable economic growth, new policies and promotions from travel agencies will be the major driving forces, and predicted that outbound tourism will see the most dramatic increase during the coming holiday.

Dai was cited by the Economic Information Daily, a business newspaper affiliated with the Xinhua News Agency, as saying that China is expected to see a gap of more than $100 billion between inbound tourism and outbound tourism in 2014.

"By the end of 2014, the number of outbound tourists is expected to reach 116 million, up 18.2 percent year-on-year, and their spending abroad to increase by 20 percent to $115 billion. The overseas tourism market is huge and extensive, covering catering, accommodation, shopping, culture and mobile payment," Dai added.

"Though the number of inbound tourists outperforms that of outbound tourists, the outbound expense is much larger than domestic tourism revenue. Chinese outbound tourists spent, amazingly, $1,368 per capita in 2013, a figure three times larger than that of inbound tourists," said Fan Zhiyong, deputy professor at the School of Economics, Renmin University of China.

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